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Tomatoes Stewed

A tomato stew made with butter, salt, pepper, sugar, and optional thickening agents.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tomatoes Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to remove the skins.

  2. Cut the tomatoes into pieces and stew them slowly for 30 minutes.

Season and thicken

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and 1 teaspoon of sugar.

  2. For a sweeter dish, add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. If desired, thicken with 1 tablespoon of flour or corn-starch dissolved in a little cold water.

  4. If desired, thicken with ½ cup of rolled crackers or bread crumbs.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the dish and release juices that become the stewing liquid.
Flour or corn-starch
Thickens the stewing liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Rolled crackers or bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and swell, thickening the stewed tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly for 30 minutes. Gentle, low heat softens the tomato pieces and lets their juices reduce and blend without scorching. Boiling hard can break the pieces down unevenly and burn the bottom of the pan.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, sugar, flour, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar, flour, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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